Motorola MPx200 review

Aesthetics aside, the MPx200's clamshell design also has two practical benefits: closed, it's the smallest on test; open, it keeps the microphone next to your mouth while in use.

An external screen lets you see who's calling, and a wheel on the side lets you adjust the earpiece volume. Shame it doesn't double up for menu navigation.

Windows Mobile 2002 for Smartphones provides exceptional office-related functions and integration with a PC running Outlook, and a copy of Outlook 2000 is included in the box.

Web browsing benefits from Javascript support and good page formatting options. The e-mail software lets you download just e-mail headers, whole e-mails or just the first 500 bytes, 1KB or 5KB of each mail. You can then see which ones you want to download in their entirety without spending a fortune in GPRS costs by downloading e-mails that can wait until you're back home. You can't run a GPRS and an ActiveSync e-mail account simultaneously - one automatically overrides the other - but although the on-screen alerts are tedious, this can actually work to your advantage: it allows you to pick up e-mails via ActiveSync and respond via GPRS, or vice versa. On the Orange and Sony phones you'd have to create a new e-mail in the other account rather than just hit reply to do this.

Our biggest gripe is that every now and then even basic functions such as opening the Start menu slow down to a crawl - just like a real PC! With the same processor and an almost identical operating system to the Orange SPV E200, we suspect the 10MB internal memory may be insufficient. This is certainly true when running several applications.

As with Windows for Pocket PC, Windows for Smartphone doesn't quit one application when moving to another - and it doesn't release the memory that application was using. The only way to do so is with the relatively inaccessible Task Manager utility - which is a bit of a pain.

The MPx200 is now only available on the Orange network. As we go to press, the Orange online shop is currently out of stock of the phone, but other suppliers are offering it at incredible prices, albeit on slightly less competitive tariffs than Orange offers directly.

The SPV E200 is a superior phone, with its updated operating system, camera and Bluetooth support, but for the many users who won't miss the camera or Bluetooth, the MPx200, with its bundled copy of Outlook, remains a strong alternative.